Trump accuses Cruz of 'fraud,' calls for new Iowa election

Donald Trump’s moment of humility didn’t last long. The billionaire businessman, still licking his wounds after a decisive loss in Iowa on Monday, is now crying foul, accusing Ted Cruz of stealing the election and calling for a do-over.

After congratulating Cruz during his concession speech on Monday night, Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to make the case for why his loss was a crock.

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"Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he illegally stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong any [sic] why he got more votes than anticipated. Bad!" Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. The tweet disappeared within minutes of posting and was replaced by another that no longer included the word “illegally.”

He followed up with an ultimatum: “Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” he tweeted. Trump said later Wednesday that he'll likely sue. "I probably will; what he did is unthinkable," he said during an interview with Boston Herald Radio.

Trump, the master of reinvention, is trying to flip the script from loser to wronged winner, after the outcome of Iowa pierced the bubble of invincibility around the real estate mogul. Trump had sailed through the first eight months of his presidential run, defying critics who predicted that his incendiary statements would surely sink him. He went into Iowa with a roughly 5-point lead but failed to close the deal, losing to Cruz, 24 percent to 28 percent.

Temporarily bowed, a somber Trump accepted the defeat Monday night and vowed to win New Hampshire. "We finished second, and I want to tell you something, I'm just honored. I'm really honored. And I want to congratulate Ted, and I want to congratulate all of the incredible candidates,” Trump said during his concession speech, flanked by his wife, Melania.

But Trump’s bravado has come roaring back. Further tweets accused Cruz’s campaign of spreading rumors that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race and of committing fraud by sending out official-looking mailers to Iowa voters that said recipients were committing a violation by not participating in the caucuses.

Cruz reacted to Trump’s accusations with amusement, and ridiculed the real estate mogul as an unstable person throwing a “Tempertrantrum.”

“I wake up every day and laugh at the latest thing Donald has tweeted because he’s losing it,” Cruz told reporters in Goffstown, New Hampshire. “We need a commander-in-chief, not a Twitterer-in-chief. We need someone with judgment and the temperament to keep this country safe.”

“I don’t know anyone who would be comfortable with someone who behaves this way having his finger on the button,” Cruz continued. “I mean, we’re liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were president, would have nuked Denmark”

The Trump campaign also contends that there could be some widespread fishiness with the caucuses. A person close to Trump's efforts said the campaign had received reports from Iowa of Marco Rubio supporters casting multiple caucus votes and of out-state Rubio staffers participating in caucuses. The person also cited reports that supporters of Sanders from Nebraska participated in the caucuses. (Rubio’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

But Trump — and his surrogates — are focusing their fire on Cruz.

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and tea party darling who endorsed Trump last month, posted on Facebook on Wednesday: “thank heavens” Trump opened up people’s eyes to the lies of the political class.

“The Cruz Campaign's actions to destroy a good man's efforts to serve are no different than Obama's practice of not holding anyone accountable. Typical politics. Typical politicians,” she said.

Trump’s spokeswoman Katrina Pierson acknowledged that skipping Fox’s GOP debate before the caucuses — and Trump's lack of investment in a ground game — may have hurt Trump’s chances in Iowa. But she said voters appreciate fair elections, and that Iowa was not one.

“Any time there has been an unfair election, the grass roots get upset because the GOP doesn't fight it, and now we have a candidate that's questioning the process because in fact you didn't have to show ID or even be a resident of the area to cast a ballot — so you have someone questioning the integrity of the caucus now, and I think that's good for the grass roots,” Pierson said on CNN.

She said that Trump deleted the word “illegally” in his earlier tweet because the Iowa secretary of state has voiced concerns about Cruz’s mailers. “But it hasn't been resolved yet, so he wanted to withdraw that statement for right now,” she said.

The Cruz campaign mailers caused major buzz over the weekend, with rivals saying they smacked of underhanded politics. The controversial mailers showed the name of the person receiving the mail at the top and then gave them a grade on an A to F scale. Below, it showed their neighbors and their voting scores. It urged them to caucus next week and warned, “A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.”

Paul Pate, Iowa's Republican secretary of state, said in a statement last Saturday that he believed the campaign literature was "not in keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses." But Matt Schultz, Cruz's state chairman and a former secretary of state himself, called the mailers "common practice to increase voter turnout."

Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning, “Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud. Also, Cruz sent out a VOTER VIOLATION certificate to thousands of voters.”

And he laid into Cruz for the Carson rumors, tweeting, “During primetime of the Iowa Caucus, Cruz put out a release that @RealBenCarson was quitting the race, and to caucus (or vote) for Cruz.”

The tweet referred to a report from CNN's Chris Moody during the caucuses that Carson would take a detour from New Hampshire following Iowa, heading to Florida instead — which some took to mean that Carson was suspending his campaign.

The Cruz campaign then alerted its leaders to the tweet from the CNN reporter but, as Cruz explained in an apology on Tuesday, neglected to send the follow-up tweet in which Moody clarified that the Carson campaign had told him that the retired neurosurgeon was not dropping out of the race but rather just picking up fresh clothes. On Monday night, Carson accused the Cruz campaign of "dirty tricks" but later accepted its apology.

Carson’s campaign said on Wednesday that Cruz’s tactics could have had an impact. "We're not saying that we would have won," Jason Osborne, Carson's senior communications strategist, told POLITICO, adding in a brief interview that "it calls into question the results."

The Carson campaign maintained on Wednesday that it has been "consistently saying" since Monday evening that it is "concerned because we've had a number of reports from precincts" in which Cruz supporters were said to have erroneously remarked that Carson was out of the race because of the initial CNN tweet.

It’s not yet clear if Trump’s accusations will go anywhere or whether they’ll have any impact on his political fortunes in New Hampshire. The real estate mogul is going into Tuesday’s primary with a double-digit lead over Cruz and has been expected to perform better there than in Iowa.

"I mean, you just never know what’s going to happen with the caucus. I mean, you think everything’s fine and it’s not like you walk in and you vote and you walk out — you’re in and out in 10 minutes, or two minutes,” Trump told host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. “The caucus system is a complex system that I was never familiar with. I mean, I was never involved with the caucus system. Don’t forget, Joe: I’m doing this for the first time. I’m like a rookie."